Page 88 - 100 Events That Made History
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Fall of
Constantinople
In 1453, OTTOMAN ruler Mehmed II put
an end to the Byzantine empire
Rise of the Turks
The Ottoman empire began in
modern-day Turkey in the 1300s.
The Ottamans were soon sweeping
across the Middle East and into Europe,
until all that was left of the Byzantine
empire (also known as the eastern
Roman empire) was a small area around
the capital, CONSTANTINOPLE. The
city’s walls had never been breached,
but the Ottomans used heavy
artillery to smash them down.
After a two-month siege, Ottoman
sultan Mehmed II walked into a
devastated city.
Constantine XI
was killed during
the siege.
End of an era
The fall of the city drastically changed
How it changed
Europe. In one swoop, the Muslim Ottomans Aside from ending
had seized the center of the Orthodox Christian the Roman empire,
religion, effectively closed the trade routes Constantinople’s fall
between Asia and Europe, and, in deposing forced Europeans
Byzantine Emperor CONSTANTINE XI (left), to look West to get
to the East.
ended the last surviving part of the Roman
empire. Constantinople became known as the world
“Istanbul,” and became the capital of the
Ottoman empire until it fell in 1922.
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